What the H%?K happened to marketing departments?

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As a university student my dream was to work with strategy and positioning for one of the big companies. When asking around, the recommendation I got was to get a degree in marketing because that would give you a real overview of what matters when taking a business to the market. 

Reading Mark Ritson’s analysis in Marketing Week on the most recent CMO Survey from Duke University’s top marketing professor Christine Moorman, I was reminded why we started MY Telescope. Marketing has gone from business to only communications. 

I’m not saying communications is not important, but it should only be one of the parameters driving your business. I don’t know if it is the new terminology with customer experience that has taken over in an attempt to put more focus on the end buyer? But why the heck do we need to change words just because we are too lazy to actually understand what has been out there since the 60s? The most basic concept that should be in every marketer’s backbone:

Price - are we able to charge the right price?

Product - do people actually enjoy what we sell and want to become customers?. 

Promotion- how we communicate. Are we disturbing or actually bringing value? 

Place - are we meeting the potentially customers how and where they want to be catered to?.


My overall analysis is what went wrong is that too much focus has moved to communication. The reason for this is that lots of the advertising out there has been disturbing, not bringing value to the customer. But that does not mean that it should take over the whole discussion. It’s a part of the whole marketing mix that needs to work. 

So when launching our competitive tracker, the focus from My Telescope is on strategy. How my brand is doing in comparison to competition in 6 aspects. Price, Product, Proposal to the market, Communications , Service and if the brand is top of mind (Preference). Our strong conviction is that it will help marketers to have a more educated discussion with management on how to position their brand and how to take the products and offering to market.

Rodrigo Pozo Graviz